My daughter is a fan of reading.

I say “reading”, what I mean is making up stories and listening to me reading to her. Frog is approaching three and a half and is starting to remember which letters make which sounds. If she’s anything like her mum, then I have no doubt she will be an avid reader once she grasps what the squiggly lines on the page mean.

Before we relocated to South Devon at the beginning of the school holidays, we had a major sort through the books on Frog’s shelves. She still had lots of baby cardboard books which she no longer looked at. Some of her books were just a bit naff, while others were so worn they needed mending.

One of the first places we discovered in our current home town was the library. We make a fortnightly trip there to swap books and Frog loves that she has her very own library card.

The books she is currently loving are:

My mum bought The Day The Crayons Quit (by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers) as a present for Frog, to celebrate her first day at pre-school. She’d read a review in The Guardian and instantly knew her granddaughter would love it. My mum wasn’t wrong. It’s funny, creative, beautifully illustrated and couldn’t be further removed from your boring old princess stories.

Second up is the stunning The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name. I was sent this book to review and when I opened the parcel I literally gasped. The whole book has been personalised with Frog’s name and it’s really helped her to learn the letters that spell her name. Created by a three dads and an uncle, you can tell the book has been designed by a team who know about kids. You can buy a book featuring any child’s name and, if you’re looking for a quirky and special present this Christmas, I urge you to think about investing in one of these books!

We discovered Barney Saltzberg about a year ago with his book Arlo’s Glasses. Back then, Frog was obsessed with reading the book and taking out the removable glasses, that it got terribly battered. A Little Bit of Oomph is based on a similar pop-out design, with bright colours and bold patterns. In fact, if you like design you will LOVE this book. The story is based around the idea that you can make anything shine that bit brighter if you work at it, which I think is a pretty lovely lesson. And for a three year old who likes funny words, funny faces and vivid colours, it has gone down a treat.

Last on our list of current reading favourites are The Black and White Club (by Alice Hemming) and Miss Dorothy Jane Was Ever So Vain (by Julie Fulton), which we were sent for review. Both these books are funny and carry a sweet message. They’re really easy to read and I think Frog loves them so much because they’re like the book version of comfort food. She often requests one or the other at bedtime, which is rather sweet really.

What are your children reading at the moment? Any good books we should add to our reading list? 

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It’s fair to say we’re a bookish family. At least, I am bookish and my daughter is bookish, but my husband prefers films and computer games, only picking up reading material on a beach when there’s “nothing else to do”. Anyway, this post isn’t about encouraging a 32 year old man to read, it’s about toddlers.

So.

We were sent a bundle of books to review by Maverick Books recently. It’s one of those parcels that you just don’t open right before bedtime, because the excitement is sure to mean a hyper two year old who will not sleep before 8pm. Did I mention that she LOVES books?

As much as she loves books, she loves the books she knows and isn’t much interested in the ones she doesn’t. It tends to take a week or two of a book being on her shelf before my daughter will deign to pick it up. And she’s VERY particular about her bedtime reading. This is the reason that tonight has been the first evening where we’ve actually sat down and read the books sent to us.

Tonight’s bedtime was accompanied by The Jelly That Wouldn’t Wobble, written by Angela Mitchell and The Fearsome Beasite, written by Giles Paley-Phillips.

Both books grabbed Frog’s attention for the entire duration, to the extent that she asked for them again when we’d finished. She’s the master of delaying tactics at bedtime.

The Jelly That Wouldn’t Wobble is a fun book about (you can guess) a jelly that wouldn’t wobble. The elderly and diva-like princess is the star of the book, shouting at the overworked chef to sort the problem before she banishes his creation to a punishment of melting.

Frog loved the bright, colourful pictures in the book and laughed along with the “Wibble, wobble” type of language. Being a fan of jelly, she just couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t wobble.

Secretly, I was a bit disappointed the stubborn jelly was duped into wobbling and being eaten at the end, as I rather liked his fighting spirit. Frog disagreed though, rubbing her belly with a “Yum, yum” at the end.

The Fearsome Beastie came next. This is a book not for the faint-hearted, so I wouldn’t recommend it for kids with a more sensitive disposition. About a (again, you can guess) “fearsome beastie” that lives in a cave and comes out at night hunting for children, it has shades of the Three Little Pigs about it. After scoffing a few gullible children, he meets his end when a no-nonsense granny comes to the rescue with an axe, freeing the kids from his tummy and turning him into stew.

Now, my daughter’s only two years old and has been known to be a bit of a scaredy cat at times. She cowers at all manner of things, but shouts with glee in equal measure at others. In short, her scaredy quirks are unpredictable. What I think she won’t like, she often loves with a passion.

This book is one of them.

As I read the words to her and showed her the dark picture of the menacing beastie, her eyes lit up. I think she quite liked him actually. She thought the idea of gran coming to the rescue absolutely hilarious and asked me to explain why HER “Mar Mar” doesn’t make beastie stew.

I guess it goes to show that with books and encouraging young kids to read, often anything goes. Afterall, what does mum know anyway?

***

We were sent these books for the purpose of this review. Please see my disclosure page for more information.

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This is something I’ve been pondering about on and off for the last few months. I’m always really hesitant to blog about blogging here as, mainly, I think it’s desperately dull for the people who read this blog and don’t blog themselves. So if that’s you, feel free to look away now.

For the rest of you, I’d like to know your opinion. Which is why I’ve decided to publish a completely self-indulgent, blog-naval-gazing post.

So, blogging. Is it enough just to have great content? To be a good blog WRITER (if that is your thing), do you need to also be a good blog READER?

I grew up an avid bookworm. I loved reading books and would immerse myself for hours at a time in other worlds, completely unaware of what was happening on the other side of the page. But I also loved to write. By the age of ten I had amassed a huge collection of stories, many with illustrations. I would read, feel inspired and then write.

The same is true of more recent years. As a journalist, the more newspapers and magazines I read, the more ideas I would have for articles – both on the radio, online and in print. I really do think that the more “content” you consume (novels, news stories, features, photographs etc etc), the more you can be inspired to produce your own unique content.

But when it comes to blogging, I feel a bit lost at sea. The sheer volume of amazing blogs out there can sometimes be overwhelming. And the pressure to comment and let people know you’ve read and enjoyed what they’ve written or posted can sometimes be enough to put me off reading altogether.

It hasn’t always been this way. This time last year, when I wasn’t stretched to working 60+ hours a week, I would happily read LOADS of blogs and comment on nearly every single one. These days, time is non-existent. I’m now lucky if I get 6 hours sleep a night and that doesn’t always leave me in the best place to fit in blog reading time. So I guess I’ve become a bit of a bad blog reader.

I’m often guilty of reading and running, will often mean to share a great post but run out of time, don’t always read a post that grabs me and too many times have had to make the decision between posting on my own blog or reading and commenting on another. And because I’m clearly not an altruistic enough blogger, my own content will always come first.

But that has left me feeling a bit uneasy. Surely one of the great things about blogging is that level of engagement with other bloggers? It’s fine to just post and do your own thing if that’s what you want to do, but my blog has really benefited from engaging and commenting and sharing with the blogging world. On days where I read lots of blogs and comment, I notice a jump in my stats. I find new ideas to inspire me to write new blog posts. And when I’m doing that I feel like a “proper” blogger.

But it just isn’t possible to keep that up all the time. Commissioned writing that I’m getting paid for has to come first and (occasionally) I also need to sleep. Not to mention the tiny fact I have a demanding toddler who takes up just a tiny proportion of my time *cough*.

So where does that leave the blog? If I can’t be a good blog reader to the extent that I used to be, does it follow that I can’t necessarily be a good blog writer?

I’d love to know your thoughts on this, because I’m stumped for an answer.

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In just under four months I’ll be a married woman. Either that or my relationship will be in tatters. It all depends if I manage to hold the Bridezilla in me at bay. So before it all goes horribly wrong, I thought I’d take part in the meme devised by Super Amazing Mum and Manic Mum and record how I got here. For posterity’s sake and all that.

When myself and the (self proclaimed) Northern Love Machine announced we were “with child” a lot of people assumed it was an accident. How could we have planned a baby when we’d only been together a year and weren’t even married? We didn’t own our own home and I was only 26. Apparently in life you are meant to do things in a certain order, at a certain time.

Well no one told us that. And if they did, we weren’t listening.

We met in the venue of romance that is The After Dark nightclub in Reading. A shared love of sticky floors, cheap booze and rapping bouncers helped us find each other. That and the fact the NLM is six foot five so is hard to miss.

Anyway, we had our first kiss outside the toilets. It went something like this:

NLM (in his soft Rochdale tones): Look, we both know this is inevitable. Come here and give me a snog.

Me: Oh, OK then.

What a picture of romance.

It carried on like that for a couple of months. Kissing outside toilets and getting drunk, with the occasional pub meal thrown in for good measure.

And then came Christmas. We both spent the festive season apart as the NLM went back up North to his Motherland (Rochdale) and I went out west to mine (Bristol). New Year’s Eve arrived and we crossed each other somewhere on the motorway. The NLM drove from the North back down to Reading to celebrate with his friends and I drove up from Bristol to Manchester to celebrate with some of mine.

And then I got drunk again.

I was still swigging sipping champagne at 8am on New Year’s Day and thought it would be a good idea to ring the NLM and wish him a Happy New Year. In my inebriated state I’d forgotten I was meant to be back in Reading that night to go out for a drink with him. When he reminded me,  I said the only way I’d be there was if he drove up to Manchester to collect me as I would still be over the limit and couldn’t drive. I was joking. He’d only completed the four hour drive the day before so wasn’t going to drive all the way back just to pick me up for one drink, was he? No one’s that stupid, right?

Wrong.

After collapsing in a heap on the sofa I was woken at 6pm by my friend shaking me awake telling me there was a “tall Northern man outside”. He’d driven all the way from Reading up to Manchester, having only driven from Manchester to Reading the day before.

In a haze I stumbled into his car, completely forgetting my own car was parked just round the corner. And we made the four hour drive back to Reading, with a short stop around two hours into the journey. I’d been sick, you see. All over the interior of the NLM’s brand new car.

We arrived back in Reading after midnight, by which time all the pubs had shut. And I was certainly not in the mood for alcohol. I immediately fell fast asleep only to wake at 7am the following morning remembering I’d left my car in Manchester. So I made the NLM drive me all the way back to collect it. And then we drove back to Reading. Again.

We moved in together a month later. I thought I’d be unlikely to find a man willing to drive eight hundred miles for me in the space of two days. And let me vomit all over his car.

It was exactly a year later, on New Year’s Day (well midnight New Year’s Eve to be precise) that the NLM proposed. The memory of driving back and forth across the country and cleaning up my sick was forever etched in his memory as the day we became “serious”, so he thought it a fitting date to ask me to marry him.

Since that time I’ve managed to avoid throwing up in his car again. And I’ve had a baby. So it looks like he’s stuck with me forever now. Lucky man.

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Bear with me, it’s important. (Frog’s Northern Granny says so and you don’t want to mess with her – she’s a librarian).

Now, unless you’ve been abroad for a year or living in a hole somewhere, you might have gathered there’s been a bit of a fuss about libraries recently. Back in February, there were a load of very civilized “Read-ins”, where people went and sat in their local library reading books for a day. While it all sounds rather relaxing, they were actually making a very important point: libraries are under threat and we need to start showing we care about them.

The thing is, it doesn’t end there.

You might not know about it, but the Government’s reviewing a raft of duties that local authorities legally have to stick to. The Public Libraries and Museums Act of 1964 is one of them. This is the law that says local authorities have to provide a comprehensive and efficient public library service. In plain English, it means the likes of you and me get free access to decent books as well as all the other things that libraries do nowadays.

For mums like me, I’m talking about rhyme times and story sessions for our babies. Not the expensive ones you have to pay for, but the free ones, which are accessible to everyone.

When I was tiny, my mum and I used to go to the library a lot. We would sit and read a whole range of books for an entire afternoon. It was a treat, something I looked forward to and got excited about. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford to buy our own books, we had a house full of them. But in the library, there were whole shelves of new stories. Ones I’d never read before. And if I was really lucky, there would be a story time, where an old woman would read to us and we’d have a little sing-song. As a three year old, this was my version of a Take That concert.

Then I grew up and went to university. And the library once again became my friend. When I was back home and needed to research an essay or do some background reading, I knew I could pop along to the local library and pick up a book. It was a given. Easy.

And then I became a mum. Once again I turned to the library. Not to read up on anything this time, but to have a reason to get out of the house. I took my baby to rhyme time sessions and sing-along time. All free. Unlike the many other activities we do together.

But it looks like history won’t be repeated. When my daughter turns three, I won’t get to take her to the library. We won’t get to find a quiet corner and read some new books. She won’t get a mini Take That concert in the form of a sing-along session. Because the libraries are going.

Unless we do something about it.

Remember The Public Libraries and Museums Act I was banging on about just now? This is the law that says councils have a legal duty to provide library services. Well the Government wants to find out if we think this still stands. Should councils still have to provide libraries? Are they needed, or are they a “burden” (their words, not mine).

If you want to speak up, all you have to do is fill in a form which takes all of two minutes. There are more details here.

If you think this doesn’t affect you, think again. False Economy recently published a map showing all the cuts and proposed cuts to libraries around the UK. The chances are you’ll see a red mark where you live.

So please make Frog’s Northern Granny proud. Fill in that form and tell them you want to keep the libraries. For your children. And your children’s children. And your children’s children’s children. (I could go on, but you get where I’m going with this).

Frog + book = happy baby

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We met:

Dummy Mummy

Justified Design

Cinnamon and Truffle

Now, who would you like to meet this week? If you’re not familiar with the rules, here they are again for you.

Your three new blogs will be unveiled here on Thursday. So what are you waiting for? Get in touch and do my work for me!

By the way, I’m off on holiday for two weeks as of next weekend. Seeing as we are traveling Super Super economy, I’m pretty sure I’m banned from filling up our entire baggage allowance with a laptop.

So that means no Introducing for two weeks. Unless one of you lovely lot wishes to host it for me? It would mean doing the oh-so-draining job of reading some magnificent blogs and then bringing them to everyone else for two Thursdays in a row.

If you fancy it, get in touch: [email protected]

The post An Introducing Shout Out appeared first on Mother's Always Right.

But I’m pretty lazy and very busy. And I have a baby. So I probably don’t read as much as I should.

This is where I need your help.

Every Thursday I’m going to post a new feature called Introducing. This is your chance to tell me about your blog, or any other blogs that you love. I will pick three new blogs to feature each week.

If you want to be featured all you have to do is email me: [email protected] and introduce yourself, with a link to your blog.

Nothing fancy or time-consuming. No listy stuff or dedicated posts or anything even remotely draining. Simply email me and I will do the rest.

This means some of my readers (mainly my mum) who don’t blog or use Twitter will be able to find you. Not all blog readers are bloggers themselves don’t you know.

So what are you waiting for? Get involved and introduce yourself. But be quick, the first Introducing goes up tomorrow.

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Bookfrog

Call me an over-eager mum, but I love reading to my baby. I have done since she was about four days old. Maybe it’s because I had a bedtime story every night as a child, maybe it’s because I still love to read now. Or maybe it’s just that I like the sound of my own voice and having a baby is the perfect excuse to talk to someone who can’t tell me to shut up.

The poor girl never had a chance. Coming from a family of English teachers, Librarians, Journalists and Drama teachers, it’s fair to say Literature is in her genes (although we won’t count her computer game addict father whose idea of a good book is the autobiography of Chopper Reid, the famous Australian vigilante. Google him. Seriously scary).

From the day we brought Frog home from the hospital we decided to include a bedtime story as part of her night routine. Admittedly, at a week old she was very rude and slept through the whole thing, but I carried on with the stories, because I enjoyed finding out what happened at the end for myself.

I didn’t have the foggiest idea that reading to a baby is good for them, I just guessed it couldn’t be bad. But the research shows I’m not as stupid as I may have thought, because reading to a baby does have its benefits. Studies have shown that language skills are related to how many words an infant hears each day. In one study, children whose parents spoke to them a lot scored higher on standard tests when they reached age 3, compared to those whose mums and dads weren’t so verbal. And you can’t deny it, reading is a good way of talking to your baby, if general chit chat makes you feel like a bit of a plum.

But not all babies and children get read to, even if they would probably rather like it. We take access to books for granted, although with looming closures of many libraries maybe we shouldn’t. But, while we have to contend with library closures, in many parts of the world, some children have not even seen a book, let alone a library. It’s World Book Day on 3^rd March and Book Aid International hopes to change this, in sub-Saharan Africa at least. If you have a minute, check out their blog and watch the video. If you question the power of books and reading, this may clear a few things up.

At nearly eight months, Frog now reaches for the pictures in her storybooks. She loves the sparkly fish in Little Fish Goes Exploring and laughs out loud when we read Dear Zoo. Her bedtime story has been the same one for the last five months, Bedtime with Humphrey, and now she won’t go to sleep without it. It’s a good way for her Dad and Grandparents to bond with her too, although I’m starting to detect a hint of boredom from her Dad when Humphrey comes out again, given away by his renaming of “Humphrey” to “Humphreyfina” (this is from the man who said he wanted to call his daughter Geoffafine because he likes the name Geoffrey so much).

Regardless of the ad-libbing, we will continue to read to Frog until she tells us to shut up, which I hope won’t be for a while yet. At least not until we’ve got to The Very Hungry Caterpillar. And Doctor Dog. And The Secret Garden. Oh, and Harry Potter. And The Gruffalo. And George’s Marvellous Medicine. And don’t forget The BFG. And Giraffe’s Can’t Dance. And Peace At Last.. And…………………………..

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